Hard Landing
The worst moment in my life was a hard landing at Danang, Vietnam in early
1968. On a normal day, the only bad result would have been my obligation to
pick up the bar tab at the Tuy Hoa Officers Club that night. But this was a
special trip. We were carrying wounded GI's from Dong Ha to Danang.
Dong Ha was a postage stamp strip just 5 miles from the North Vietnamese border.
That area of Vietnam is oddly like an English moor, rolling grass plains and
few trees. At night, they lit the 2,600 foot strip with those little round kerosene
lamps they used around construction sites through the early 50's. Dong Ha was
a place where a wounded soldier, minutes from the field, would be transferred
from a helicopter to a C-130 rigged to carry 72 litters, plus medical staff.
We could get them to Danang in 30 minutes and the worst cases would be put on
another chopper for a three minute trip to the hospital ship in Danang harbor.
That afternoon, I was told as they loaded on the litters at Dong Ha, we carried
a kid with a sucking chest wound.
I normally had no trouble landing the C-130 – John
Robb will confirm that it's a tractable, responsive and forgiving aircraft.
But every pilot just gets it wrong once in a while, and we typically made a
dozen landings a day, so the law of averages caught up with all of us every
month or so. But at Danang? Jeezus, the runway's 2 miles long and 300 feet wide
and it was broad daylight. It was just a bonehead mistake. The landing was really
hard. Not a bounce, there was no airspeed left to afford that, just a crunch
that would make you wonder if the gear was OK, if you didn't know how tough
these planes are. Normally, the crew would have burst out laughing, having a
good-hearted guffaw at my expense – just one more of the many delights
of hauling stuff around Vietnam, since most of our cargo was things, not people.
But today no one said a word. No doctor running to the flight deck to yell
at the miserable clod who just jarred the teeth of all the people in back who
still had a face. No conjecture on how was the kid with the sucking chest wound.
I've done a lot of things to regret, but nothing as irredeemable as that hard
landing at the wrong time.
The Kids Matter
I was reminded of that moment when I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 this weekend. Michael
Moore's purpose is to shock us with the images of our guys and their people
maimed and killed by the carnage of war. He's been criticized by those who think
he went too far. Those of us who've witnessed the combat know that Moore understates
its effects. If he aired more extreme footage for three hours, he'd still understate
the horror of those scared, confused and suddenly mortal 19-year-olds, whose
lives will never be the same.
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has
seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
– Dwight Eisenhower
That is why combat veterans don't talk much about their experiences. Only distant
observers like me, witnessing the action from on high or the results lying in
the cargo bay, can even broach the horror. We're silent not because we're strong
but because we cannot comprehend how stupidly the inexperienced bulk of society
speaks of war as a rational option that we're entitled to use on people the
way a company might launch a hostile takeover: Boys with tin soldiers, attempting
to seem grown up.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our
liberties or democratic processes.
– Dwight Eisenhower
Ah, some say. You've been scarred by an unfortunate personal experience that
blinds you to the necessity of expressing America's rights in the global arena.
We honor your experience but not your conclusions. Like history's great leaders,
we must wage foreign policy with the objectivity demanded of real adults like
us. Why else would we be in power, if we were not a better judge of international
realities?
You do not lead by hitting people over the head-that's assault, not leadership.
– Dwight Eisenhower
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies,
in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who
are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of
iron.
– Dwight Eisenhower
We merely want to live in peace with all the world, to trade with them,
to commune with them, to learn from their culture as they may learn from ours,
so that the products of our toil may be used for our schools and our roads
and our churches and not for guns and planes and tanks and ships of war.
– Dwight Eisenhower
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our
liberties or democratic processes.
– Dwight Eisenhower
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults
by concealing evidence that they never existed. Don't be afraid to go in your
library and read every book...
– Dwight Eisenhower
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace
so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and
let them have it.
– Dwight Eisenhower
I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have
persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as
he is scared, and then he is gone.
– Dwight Eisenhower
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration
and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.
– Dwight Eisenhower
No easy problems ever come to the President of the United States. If
they are easy to solve, somebody else has solved them.
– Dwight Eisenhower
12:51:35 PM 
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